I Want One

Earlier this week I got a phone call from a confused man. He said:

"Oh, hello Arnold. I'd like to leave a message for Mark..."

I'd forgotten, see, to erase the hilarious voicemail greeting I'd recorded one lazy afternoon using a comedy Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard. A Tim Westwood soundboard had embarrassed me similarly with someone a few months ago too, but I don't regret that one so much. I mean, when the opportunity to have Tha Big Dawg drop a greeting UK STYLE, BABY comes your way, you're hardly likely to pass on it are you?


When Arnie finally got round to getting the message to me (honestly, he's a good Governor and everything, but he's crap at passing messages on) I realised that the confused man was a motoring journalist from The Independent offering me the chance to take part in a test drive. You can imagine that a seasoned respectable newspaper journalist wouldn't be too impressed by the mobile phone japery of a daft Geordie, particularly as he was calling to offer said buffoon a drive in a £62,000 BMW.

With my tail lodged firmly between my legs I called him back, apologised profusely and said "yes kind sir, of course I'd like to tear around in a fast car for a few hours courtesy of a generous broadsheet." I threw a couple of long words in there, like ostensibly, just to prove I wasn't a complete moron, which ostensibly I was. As it turned out, the journalist, David Wilkins, was an extremely pleasant man and found the Arnold thing quite amusing, so he told me. He further seemed genuinely grateful that I'd agreed to take part in a test involving having a free BMW delivered to me, being given the keys, posing around for a few hours then saying that, funnily enough, I thought it was great. That's the kind of gratitude I'd like more of please.

So I went home, made a brew, sat behind my computer and 'researched' - I looked on the internet at pictures of cars. I learned that the car I would be driving was the new BMW 650i Sport, which has a 5.0 litre V8 engine, does 0-62 in just over 5 seconds and replaces the outgo...It was good, anyway.


The following day I agreed to meet David and my temporary paramour in the Washington Services car park, southbound, on Sunday. I'd like to say it was love at first sight, but unfortunately when I arrived I saw that the car BMW PR had bestowed upon us was finished in an horrific shade of maroon, and to make matters worse, it was convertible. I just don't understand convertibles, especially in this country where we get about one-and-a-half days of proper sunshine a year. Mind, if BMW sell a few of these bad boys in the summer the ozone layer might disintegrate, in which case we can all enjoy the thrill of top town, face-melting motoring. Stupid ozone layer making us all cold.

I'd arrived at the service station a bit early, so I went in for an overpriced coffee and, true to form, I went for the biggest size available, even though I knew I wouldn't have time to finish it. On my way out I realised that I was following a man who had also just bought a coffee and was making his way past all the other cars in the car park and towards the two solitary machines at the far end - my car and The Ugly Beast. "Are you walking towards that 6 Series?" I asked him. "Yes, I am," he said nervously, "you must be Mark then," he added, and our introduction was complete. However, on arrival at the car I think we both realised that we'd just bought overpriced coffees and were now in the unenviable position of having to stand outside our cars in the cold wind drinking them.

Actually, it wasn't the awkwardly silent embarrassment it could have been, mostly because we had a rather obvious talking point parked right in front of us, although I did find myself becoming rather too honest too early in my appraisal of the car. "That colour's horrific," I said, instantly realising the snotty way the comment could have been construed. I'm about to drive a genuine dream motor of mine (apart from the convertible thing) and the first thing I say is, 'yeah, it looks a bit rubbish really.' Idiot.

Then I had to balance my XXXL coffee on the top of my car while opening four of those tiny cartons of fake milk with my teeth and squeezing them into my cup with one hand. It was not going well.

"...We can get in the car of you want," said David after a bit of small talk. And it was then that I forgot I'm 26 and went into 'What Car?' mode. I'd asked him if I could put my jacket in the boot, so he gave me the key and I tried to open it. When I eventually worked out which button I had to press on the fob to get the daft thing open, I placed my jacket in the boot and remarked, "wow, that boot's TINY isn't it? If I was a golfer I wouldn't be impressed."


What? I may as well have got my tape measure out and measured the aperture. Who cares? But I was all 'hmmm, yes, one's golf club transportation requirements are a concern in this car class, so that scores this model down for me', as if I was the man to make or break 6 Series UK sales targets for BMW. Although, as it turns out, I'd pointed something out that David seemingly hadn't noticed, unless he was just humoring me. But regardless I quickly remembered my place and just got in the car.

And dear me, what a car. This was unlike anything I'd ever sat in the right side of before - it was amazing. I instantly forgot I had someone else in there with me and started pressing stuff, as you do. David was very blasé about the whole thing and completely non-patronising, just telling me a couple of things he thought I might like to know about the car and letting me get on with it. So I lowered my seat as far down as it would go, brought the sweet, sweet thick-rimmed steering wheel closer in towards me and pressed the big black button named 'START'.


To my surprise, the car was really quiet inside, which was actually a bit of a disappointment because I wanted it to roar like that lion who works for MGM. I expected it to, in fact. I pulled away tentatively, all the while the number '62,000' lodged in my mind, and we headed north up the A1.

I thought I'd go towards my parents' place in Ponteland because there are a few twisty roads up there, but alas, when I got there I was invariably stuck behind some Sunday driver determined to spoil my fun. After that we headed back up the A1 for a while, before stopping for a brew at some tiny little service station where I got to chat with David about being a journalist. Motoring journalism is, after all, what I'd like to do with myself when I'm a grown up.

He'd actually spent most of the way around Ponteland and up the A1 telling me about various ways in which I can crack into motoring journalism, all of which were useful and some of which quite eye-opening, and he was surprisingly willing to talk about cars, which was great given that most people must ask him about that most days. By the way, if you're after a fast hatchback he reckons you should buy a Ford Focus ST220.


After we finished our brew and headed back into the car park, David suggested we take the top down for the journey back to the coast. Why I agreed to it I don't know, but I found myself bombing down the A1 with no roof at 80mph, screaming at my passenger during normal conversation in order to be heard. At this stage I should explain that for some reason I'd decided that this would be a good day to try out a new hair product, something that would give my barnet a more natural look. The problem was, its holding properties left a little to be desired, so by the time I'd done 40 odd miles at motorway speeds my mullet was akin to an emu nest. (Do emus have nests? A big bird, anyway.) And we still hadn't taken the photos.


So we got to the coast and decided to find somewhere to take some photos of me and the car for the paper. Eventually we found a nice little spot looking out towards the sea, but unfortunately we had to park the car on a single track road which led to a car park, thus blocking off any number of motorists just so I could have my picture taken next to this poncy looking convertible. I was wearing a tank top too. A mostly pink tank top. And don't forget the hair.

Slightly embarrassed, I put the top back up - again a simple button pressing affair - and we headed back home. At this stage I decided to take the car out of automatic and try the sequential manual gear shift for a while, but it made me want to drive too fast so I put it back into automatic.

So, the car. Well, it was amazing, but to be honest I'm not sure whether it was £62,000 amazing, although that might be down to the colour / convertible combination. I reckon that chopping the top off a car takes most of its character away because it ends up just looking like a straight line from the side. Plus, convertibles are heavier and cloth roofs look a bit silly, like having a tent on your car. Before I saw it, you see, I'd imagined it would look like this:


...Now THAT'S a £62,000 car right there. Check out those gangsta rims.

The engine, it goes without saying, was insane, all 5.0 litres of it. Although it didn't turn my face inside out like I'd expected it to, it was so effortlessly fast that most of the time I genuinely didn't realise what speed I was doing. On the motorway, 70mph (ahem!) came up in the blink of an eye, but it was still really comfortable, quiet and smooth. The coolest, and probably most necessary, feature was the head up display which projected your speed onto the windscreen in front of you. Nice.

The interior was lush, too. All black leather, including the little dial for the onboard computer - the controversial iDrive system, for anyone who cares, which has apparently been simplified for ease of use. I found it no problem, although when I was messing around with it at the petrol station I couldn't actually get the radio turned on, but maybe that's just me. Everything was electric, even the head restraint, and the driving position was beautiful.


We got back to Washington Services about four hours after we left, but not before accidentally reaching an outrageous speed on the A1, and I reluctantly handed the keys back. I was disappointed to be leaving the car, which was awesome and I want one, but frankly it made me realise how quickly a car can cease to be a novelty. The purchase and running costs of that particular car would be thousands of pounds a month, and I wondered whether it was really worth it?

Then I slapped myself and thought 'yes, yes it would be,' and I lusted all the way home. I also screamed at my car a couple of times for being so slow. It was a fantastic experience and I hope to one day be able to spend plenty more time inside similar feats of engineering, though it would be crude, inappropriate and just plain wrong to pray to God for a spare few grand every month to spend on a car.

But can I have one please? I'll be dead good and everything, and I reckon I suit it too.

AdNonSense

When I set this page up, for some reason I fell for the 'make millions with your blog' yack and signed up for AdSense. So far I've made $1.60, about 93 pence, and now there's an advert for an electric drum kit up there. Dayang!

Don't buy one! I can live without the two cents, thanks.

God Wants Us To Grow

On 21st September 1986 I wrote a story called ‘God Wants Us To Grow’, which opened as follows:

‘The unknown is always frightening but also nearly always better.’

My sister found that story when she was moving house with my mam and dad, so she framed it for me and it’s hung on the wall just above where I’m sitting.

It seems I was wiser then than I am now, although at that time ‘the unknown’ was probably an imminent trip to the Quayside Market for a new shellsuit. Today’s unknown carries slightly more significance, because it’s not whether to opt for a fake Nike or genuine Naff Co 54 I’m concerned about, but how I’ll deal with being a daddy.

About six weeks ago I discovered that in late December my wife is going to give birth to our first child, so at Christmas we'll be welcoming either Joseph Taylor or Eve into the household - little Joey or little Evey. And I’ve just realised it could be twins, but lets put that scenario to one side until I’ve at least begun to come to terms with the thought of just one.

I’m already the daddy of many things, like Pro Evolution Soccer 4, go-karting and wearing pink, but it’s not like I can practice this one first, or phase it in gradually as I did with the latter of those skills. It’s going to be a sprint from its first poop to my last one.

I know I'm supposed to say I'm terrified, but I’m really not. At the moment I’m just enjoying the simple and delightful thought that I’ll be carrying a beautiful little boy or girl around before next year, showing it off to all my friends and buying tiny Converse hi-tops for it just like daddy’s. I haven’t yet thought about the sleepless nights, the constant crying, the huge expense, the disappearing social life and the fact that it could be an ugly little mug. Obviously, that’s never going to happen though because of the grade-A gene pool it’s coming from.

Currently I’m in a state of white fluffiness in my mind, in which my little boy or girl is the best looking, coolest, most well behaved creation ever to grace God’s Earth. And I’m going to milk this phase for all it’s worth until it comes crashing down, probably about the time that Nicola is doubled up over the bog unleashing her last ‘craving’ the wrong way at 3.30am while demanding more pickled-onion ice cream.

That’s when I’ll get scared. But for now I’m loving the congratulations and the sense of accomplishment. I’m also loving how visibly happy my wife is, constantly smiling and rubbing her stomach like there's a Ferrari F430 growing in there.

There’s a thought, we don’t have a middle name for a girl yet. Ferrari? Hmmm...

Classy middle name suggestions aside, I’m going to use this site to write about the pregnancy experience from a dad’s point of view. I’ll try and write as often as I can, because if nothing else it will provide a journal for me to look back at when it’s all over. Hopefully the experience will be adventurous enough to give me something to write about while remaining relatively unproblematic. This baby is a gift from God to us, so we know everything will be fine.

Hang on…Eve Lamborghini Nichol. Now that’s a name.

Technology Hurts

I feel I need to stop a negative feeling from boiling over inside me and making me do something I’ll regret. That feeling is hatred. Hatred against the electric drum kit in particular. I’m partial to a whinge every now and again, like most people, but I don’t really hate much at all after I’ve thought it through. Yet if I was famous and asked to go on that programme Room 101 with Paul Merton, the second thing I’d put in would be the electric drum kit. The first would be England shirts with jeans, obviously.


This thing only dawned on me in late 2005, when I had the misfortune of sampling an electric kit for the first time. I’d just joined a new church and their main building at the time was a proper old church affair – high ceiling, pews, high stage surrounded by a wooden fence thing to stop the vicar from falling off during a particularly boring sermon, that sort of stuff. The result of this was a beautiful place to worship but a modern sound man's worst nightmare, I assume because most old-skool church buildings were designed to naturally amplify an organ and nothing else. In the age of the rock and roll worship team, however, this just won’t do.

So some bright spark obviously thought, ‘oh, well drums are really loud, aren’t they, so we’ll get an electric kit in because you can turn those down, right.’ And I can appreciate, even agree with, that logic, but unfortunately I’m now the sad soul who has to use it every week. How I wish that spark hadn’t been quite so bright. (That building is now our amazing 24 hour House of Prayer, but we still have a great worship meeting there every Sunday. Please don't hear anything I'm not saying within this rant - I absolutely love the church and the worship.)

I remember trying the kit for the first time, and it was a bit like test driving a new Daewoo; the very fact you’re trying something new is initially quite exciting, but you know it’ll wear very thin very quickly. I sat behind it and hit one of the pads…

‘Aaah, that sounds quite realistic’, I thought to myself as I registered the weird sensation of sensation of hitting rubber and mesh instead of metal and plastic. I think I must have been expecting it to sound like the drums on those keyboards from the 80s with 15 keys and a built in ‘backing’ function. Then, after about ten seconds, the novelty very definitely wore off.


I’ve thought about this, and I reckon playing an electric kit is equivalent to playing a guitar made out of a cereal box with a drainpipe for a neck and elastic bands for strings, but which makes a sound like a guitar when you play it through an amp. Every ounce of feeling is taken away from you completely, and no matter what anybody says, they sound nothing like a real kit. Well, that’s not quite true, but any drummer would hear the difference no problem.

But because most people aren’t drummers, the real issue is the feeling thing. Every drummer, no matter how good or bad, is separated by their ‘voice’. A drummer’s voice is made up of things like how hard they hit the hi-hat relative to the snare, the type of grooves they play, the way their timing feels, the way they hit the cymbals and how often they play fills, stuff like that. No two drummers will sound exactly the same - they might sound a lot like someone, but their voice will always be slightly different. However, every nuance of that voice is stripped away entirely by an electric kit, mostly because they only have a few sensitivity settings. Three, in fact: quiet, loud and inappropriate.

No matter how advanced they’ve become since the days of a few hexagonal pads on a metal frame, drums are absolutely not suited to electrolysation, which is my new word for making something electric. Particular to worship music, although most other types too, sensitivity is the most important thing to have, apart from Happy Hardcore. The most important thing there is speed.

When you’re ushering in the presence of The Living God, subtlety and sensitivity are needed all the time. If you’re really worshiping and the music’s kicking it’s ok to wack the drums as hard as you can, and I love that, but then when the music’s just a background thing and God is moving, you need something different, something appropriately restrained.


However, there’s a big difference to playing something in a restrained and sensitive way and just playing quiet. This is the fundamental difference - when you hit an electric pad softly, it still makes the huge great ‘wack’ or ‘thump’ sound covered in swathes of reverb, only it does so with a few less decibels. It sucks. At the other end of the spectrum, the maximum level of sensitivity can be achieved by hitting the pads with a quite average level of force, after which there’s nowhere to go. That too sucks. If only they went to 11 like The Tap’s Marshalls, now that would be sweet. It's one louder.

The inappropriate level is again to do with sensitivity and loss of ‘voice’. In worship, there are times when a drummer is no longer just keeping a beat for a song, but adding effects. By this I mean hitting a ride cymbal to emphasise chord changes, or using a soft mallet on a crash for a nice build up, for example. Much like the snare, though, gently hit the ‘crash cymbal’ on an electric kit and all you’ll get is a big reverberant piercing “ppppssssshhhhhhh” sound, only a bit quieter.

What I’m saying is that you’re basically limited to two types of beat; loud and quiet. This is the very basic function of a drummer, to play a steady beat an appropriate level, and that’s all an electric kit will let you do, full stop. It’s like playing a football game on your PlayStation that’ll only let you pass and shoot.

Finally, there’s the pain. Not content with causing consistent mental anguish and frustration, my friend Roland obviously hates me enough to cause me physical pain too. This is a three-fold problem which I’ll explain briefly:

Firstly, the kit is set up on a rack in such a way as to only allow comfortable play for some kind of drumming midget. The hi-hat pad, for example, sits a maximum of about six inches above the snare, so you have to kind of twist your arms a funny way to avoid bashing your sticks together like some sort of amateur giant. Once you've hit it a couple of times it moves anyway, until coming to rest on top of the snare. Great.

Secondly, a couple of the pads have dead spots so you have to hit them in an awkward place, meaning further contortion of the body. And the level of frustration it brings when you hit a crash at the end of the big fill and hear nothing makes me want to pick it up and throw it at someone, usually the keyboard player, who seems to delight in my hatred of the thing. (I don't really want to throw it at him, I’m just making a point.)

And thirdly, there’s no give in the pads at all so hitting them is akin to using a hammer constantly for however long you’re playing, which wrecks after a while. When you hit a relatively thin metal cymbal it moves, cushioning the blow, but hammering a thick static rubber pad for an hour is a different and far more painful story.

Then there was the morning I woke up and thought my ears were bleeding after using it one night. It must be the frequency of the sounds or something, but now I can't bring myself to wear the in-ear monitors, so I can never hear anything other than the thump of a wooden stick hitting a rubber pad.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to take that electric kit and torch it. What I’ll actually do, however, is keep praying to God when I sit behind it that I won’t be distracted in worship by frustration, because the kit’s going nowhere.

I wouldn’t mind one myself to practice with too.

Wrong

Yesterday a friend read my blog and concluded I have verbal diarrhea.

Well, I haven't. See.

Cars

I love cars, I really do. Some people will disagree, but to me they're among the few man-made things that have a soul, much like guitars or those robotic dogs that were so good they were going to replace actual dogs back in 1996. Oh, and Tamagotchis.

Forrest Gump's momma used to say you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes; where they going, where they been. But I reckon that if she hadn't died on a Tuesday and stuck around to see the development of the automobile, she'd have used cars as a learning simile for little Forrest. See, cars are the best way for anybody to pretend to be something they're not, and I know this because I've done it.

A couple of years back I used to 'work' for a market research company. It's a long story, but for a short while they gave me a Saab 93 Turbo as my company car which cost over £2,000 per year just to insure. The fact that I was given it solely because my boss wanted to buy a BMW but had just bought a Saab which he consequently needed to hastily get rid of it was neither here nor there. The thing was, I was 23 and driving a car better than my dad, which was great. At the time I didn’t really think about the concept of doing stuff to earn money to buy flash cars, but then neither did my boss so I didn’t care.

Anyway, when I drove that car, in my daft little head I was better than everyone whose car had cost less than mine. The laughable stupidity of that notion hadn't struck me at the time, nor had the irony of the fact that obtaining such knowledge meant many hours spent flicking through the 'new car prices' section in What Car? memorising the recommended retail prices on all kinds of hatchbacks and family saloons. What a geek. Don't get me wrong, I never actually deliberately formulated thoughts of superiority towards other drivers, but that sense of 'my car (and therefore my life) is better than yours' was definitely in the back of my mind, and it made me feel good. Pathetic, isn't it?

But that thinking is all over our roads. Cars bring out a side of people that they'd (hopefully) be horrified with if they saw themselves from the outside. I see it in myself sometimes, and even though I know it's there I can't stop it. It's the thing that makes boy racers put exhausts with ever more inappropriate girth on their Citroen Saxos and makes middle aged men buy Subaru Imprezas - ego.

Somehow, your car is an alternative personality that you can buy and wrap yourself up in so that people can judge you based on that alone. The problem is, a car rarely says what you actually want it to say, it usually just says that you couldn't quite afford what you really wanted. German 'luxury hatchbacks' particularly allude to that.

In days gone by, if people wanted to better themselves they’d buy a book and read it. Or, they’d plant bigger daffodils in their front garden than the neighbours and wait as their superiority grew in bulbous yellow splendour. These days, people just get themselves down to ‘Colin’s Crazy Autotint’ for some black sticky-back-plastic to put on their windows, or they buy a box of transfers from www.blingblingtuningmadness.com to stick to the front wing. It doesn’t matter that you can’t string a coherent sentence together, as long as you’ve got the right brands transferred onto the side of your motor when you’re doing donuts in the Blockbuster car park.

There are very, very few cars that make people look cooler than they already are, or aren’t, as the case may be. Maybe it’s just because I’m a loser who pays too much attention, but there are loads of absolutely inexplicable things people do to their cars in desperate bids for attention. A good example is the fake badge. Consider the scenario; a young man purchases terrible old / underpowered car then spends three quid in ‘Kroozin’ or some other downmarket Halfords for a plastic badge that says ‘16v’ or ‘M Sport’ or whatever, under the pretence that this will enhance his credibility among other motorists and, more importantly, girls. This is all well and good, but if he stopped for even one moment to consider the folly of his logic, he could use the three quid to buy poppers or something instead.

You see, if you think about it, anybody who knows cars at all would know that the badge is fake, that the German mechanical gurus at BMW Motorsport DID NOT power his P-reg Corsa and that there certainly are not 16 valves under that plastic ‘carbon’ bonnet. So, to the discerning motorist, both car and driver become objects of sustained mockery and pity, their dignity stripped away for the sake of a few quid. Equally, anybody with no knowledge of cars, your average girl for example (oooh), would be absolutely none the wiser, again rendering the badges a complete waste of time and money. A lose / lose situation of ever there was one.

Unfortunately, though, manufacturers do it too, manifested in the ‘sport’ editions of their cars, and suckers like me fall for it every time. I’d love to be a car salesman for a few days just to be honest with people about what they’re actually buying:

“Excuse me kind salesman, why is this car much more expensive than that similar one over there?”

“Well, sir”, I’d say, “this one’s the ‘sport plus’ edition. It has the same wheezy little 1.4 engine and awful ride, but it has fake leather around the steering wheel, the alloy wheels are a full one inch bigger and it says ‘sport’ on the back. Now, that’s one and a half grand well spent if you ask me.”

Then I’d add, in true car salesman style, “plump for the ‘sport plus extreme max’ edition, however, and yourself will also get an inch of plastic glued to the boot to increase aerodynamic efficiency, which stops the car leaving the ground under aggressive acceleration, sir.”

Yet I’d buy that car, the extreme one, even though I know I’m being ripped off, and I’d do it because it’s at least an inch better than my neighbour’s version of the same car. Let’s not go the there, though.

But what happens when all the options in the world just won’t do? A trip to ‘New Reg’, perhaps? Nothing says 'I have style and sophistication’ better than a personal number plate, especially one that looks like it might spell something that’s almost approaching either your name, or better yet, the name of your car. If a 911 just won’t do, a 911 with the plate ‘PO02RCH’ surely will. Just in case you’re not sure what he’s driving, the number plate reveals all…He’s driving a porch. Obviously somebody with a slightly less relaxed brain had gone in for ‘PO02CHE’ first.

I suppose you have to give some people respect for trying to make their cars look a bit different, but car customisation is an art that so very few people get right. I can count on one hand the number of customised cars I’ve ever seen and thought ‘wow, that looks good.’ Usually, I wonder what on earth possessed that person to spend so much money making their mam’s old shopping trolley look like it ram raided Halfords and drove around the shop covered in superglue.


Part of the package, too, is the aural experience. A well customised car not only has to look the part, it also needs to sound like Russell Grant farting in an empty Opera House after his third dinner of the evening. There are few things funnier than hearing the bellow of a fully tricked out Peugeot 106 from a distance, then turning to watch as it trundles past you just quicker than walking pace, despite it sounding like a Boeing 747.

Which brings me onto the racing thing. Why why why why why do people do it? Why? I own a one-year-old 1.2 Renault Clio, which is a decent little car, but let’s be honest, it’s only just faster than jogging. Therefore, me racing some fool in a Citroen Saxo with tinted windows is akin to two Goths arguing over who’s got the pastiest complexion – it’s a contest you should probably be embarrassed about participating in, more so winning. All you say about yourself when you race somebody at a set of traffic lights, particularly if you’re in a hatchback, is ‘I’m inadequate – join me, won’t you.’

I got a book for Christmas called ‘What Not To Drive’ which I found quite entertaining because it basically concluded that most cars are inherently uncool apart from cheap European hatchbacks, and I own one of those. Sadly, if I’m honest with myself, that really doesn’t make me feel better about having to own a cheap European hatchback. See, for all I’ve just said, what I actually want to own is something big, very fast and very bad for the environment, with tinted windows, huge wheels, an outrageously large spoiler and an exhaust that makes the ground shake. I want a car that will make light bend and turn my face inside out when I put my foot down. I’ll look like a complete idiot in it and everybody will hate me, but I don’t care.

And that’s the problem. I don’t want to race people at traffic lights (anymore) but I need to know that if I chose to, I would win. I also need to know that my car’s faster than most and that it looks better. It’s totally pathetic, I know, but it's true. The genuinely cool people are the ones that really couldn’t care less, which means that me and legions of other people who do are perpetually fighting a losing battle. A really tragic battle that nobody will ever win, but a nonetheless entertaining one for the passer-by. Now, where’s that Halfords catalogue?